Week 4: Sima Loves Advisors

 

Class 7: The Prime Minister Xiao biography is a chain of links of advice giving and taking to illuminate Sima’s latent point: good outcomes come from good advisors.

     On 95m, the former marquis and current melon grower Shao gives the recently promoted to prime minister (95t) Xiao advice. As one who does not have flesh in the game, Shao has the outside perspective necessary to interpret the emperor’s action of giving Xiao a bodyguard (and more land): “he doubts your loyalty.” (95m) It would be easy for Xiao to think these gifts were to support him; after all, he had just been promoted by that very man—he would be totally justified to imagine the emperor has much faith in him. In fact, the emperor left him to “guard the capital area” (95m). And yet Xiao somehow recognizes that Shao’s opinion is correct. Was this the interpretation of the situation which he had feared to see for himself? Or had he merely not considered it at all? All we get to know is that he accepts the advice given to him by a humble melon man and, for doing so, receives the “great pleasure of the emperor” (95mb).

     Prime Minister Xiao is, on 98mt, regarded by Sima as “first among the ranks of officials” and a “worthy minister” (97m) after releasing him from the prison he put him in. One might expect that being so good at his job might mean that he does not need help. And yet, a tool that serves him, and the emperor, is that he is open to advice himself. The greatest advisor is not merely defined by how good the advice he gives is, but how good is the advice that he takes. He was willing to take advice from not only a commoner, but one who was demoted to that position, one who was contrary to “all the other ministers who went to congratulate [Xiao]” (95mt). I read that Sima here tells us that good advice is good advice, regardless of the source. He is justifying using any source of advice, offering his wisdom to future rulers, and furthering his argument on 101t, when Zhang Liang’s career is started because he gives good advice—good advice that comes from a book.

Class 8: (113t) Zhang Liang, “teacher to an emperor…among the ranks of nobility” says of his position that “a common man can reach no greater heights.” The obvious question might be, “but isn’t the emperor higher?”

    First, what is a “common man”? Was the emperor beyond common? No: Gaozu, the emperor Zhang served, “rose from the humblest beginnings” (85t): he too came from common stock. This implies that Zhang, who must have known Gaozu’s origins, is saying his position, whatever it may be, is even higher than his boss’s.

    Being a teacher to the emperor, however, does, in a way, set him above his boss. On 112b, we see Gaozu taking Zhang’s advice. The emperor and his troops become the body to carry out the methods of the mind of Zhang—is this not in some way more power? The man who wields the fists, follows, by choice, the orders of a man with the face of a “pretty young girl.” (114t) Gaozu admits that regarding strategies, he is “no match for Zhang Liang.” (133b) What then is the role of an emperor? His power lies in choosing or discarding the advice of those who try to guide him—or acting on his own impulse.

    On the 100t, Zhang “swallows his resentment” at the old man. At this point, if he did not do so, he might never have gotten the book (100mb) nor the job with Gaozu that came as a direct result (101t). There is a great tension here—the titular character of this story is, in this way, defined by this singular action. If he acts out and attacks, or doesn’t help the old man, none of this tale would be told. But he does control himself. Not only does he set himself up by earning the book but proves he “can learn” (100mt) and he does learn from the Grand Duke’s book (100mb) enough to get his job. He has controlled his anger, he has “constantly pored” (100b) over a “profound text greatly admired and always followed” (101t) by an emperor—and so he lived a life of some internal peace, education, and more than a little sway. What more could he ask for?